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SAP General Interview Questions

General SAP Interview Questions

Q. What does R in SAP R/3 Stand for ?

A. R stands for Real time. This is a relic from the mainframe days where processing used to be mostly batch based.There is a presentation layer ( SAP GUI ) , Database layer and an Application Layer( The SAP application server with its dispatcher and work processes).

Q. What is the difference between R/2 and R/3 ?

A. R/2 is the real time system built by SAP on a mainframe. R/3 is built by SAP using the client server technology.

Q. What is a Transport ?

A. A transport is a way of transfering configuration, customization or development from one system to another with a very high level of integrity. For example, a configuration of creating a company code could involve touching hundreds of tables and all the entries in the tables are recorded in a “Transport”.

A. You can consider a client like a virtual table inside an actual database table. For example, in an IDES system the client used is 800. Similarly there are other clients like 810, 820. In the database table KUNNR there is data relevant for all the clients. However, to the user of the client 800, the system only shows customers in the database table corresponding to client 800 only. It is a logical way of partitioning an instance.

Q. How does SAP maintain Database Transparency ?

A. SAP is built in such a way that it can work with any database ( or a specific set of databases as opposed to being restricted to a single database like Oracle or DB2 ). Although each database has its own query language ( SQL variation ), SAP works at a higher level of abstraction using a proprietary SQL language ( Called Open SQL ) so that the users can write in a consistent SQL language in ABAP and SAP takes care of converting the Open SQL into the database specific native SQL.

Q. What is debugging ? How do you start debugging ?

A. Debugging is the processes of analyzing the program/process step by step in the code. You can start debugging by typing “/h” in the command window and hitting the return key.

Q. How many simultaneous sessions can you create in the SAP GUI ?

A. You can create a maximum of 6 sessions normally. The actual number of sessions is set by the SAP Basis administrator using a parameter key.

Q. What is a Transaction code (or TCode ) ?

A. A transaction code is a way of executing a certain item in the menu path or a program. It is just a short cut to executing the program or the menu path. Sometimes it can be very inconvenient to navigate through the entire menu path to execute a transaction. Instead you can just enter the tcode in the command window and execute the transaction. Similarly, instead of executing a program using SE38, you can use a transaction code if there is a transaction code assigned to a program.

Q. What is the difference between a server instance and an SAP “Client” ?

A. An SAP server instance is the runtime of the entire SAP software running on a single of multiple platforms ( In case of a distributed application server architecture example ). It has a set of work processes, dispatchers running. A client on the other hand is just a logical component of an SAP instance . An instance could contain multiple clients.

A. A spool is a memory area in SAP where SAP stores a user’s print output. Normally any print outs issued by the user in background mode are stored in the spool and can be executed at will.

Q. How can you know the transaction you are currently running ?

A. To the bottom right of the SAP GUI screen in the status bar, click on the drop down that contains the system name. It will give you the transaction code name.

Q. What is Business Process Re-engineering ?

A. Re-engineering is the fundamental re-thinking & redesign of the business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical performance measures. These measures could be defined by what is critical and what is not for the organization’s metrics for success.

A. OSS provides customers with a direct on-line link to R/3 services and information. It enables independent identification and processing of system problems through their online database. Customers can log their problems, find solutions to commonly occuring issues, download notes and patches etc.

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